You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.
Frederick B. Wilcox
Class Warfare, Chicken Little and Budget Summer
The President's class-warfare/populist rhetoric piped up at the news conference Wednesday. I didn't cover it at the time because he's been repeating the same trite points so many times, it's 'been there, done that'. I hate populism and red meat politics with a passion. The disingenuous President is caught by the Las Vegas newspaper cited above: one of the main points of the news conference: corporate jet owner tax breaks. Now, I'm sure you must be wondering the same as me that you can make up $1.6T in the red, by eliminating these tax breaks.. But it turns out the real story is even more interesting. It turns out that these breaks, which the President is implying is GOP-supported, was introduced in the 2009 stimulus bill, which as you may recall only got support from 3 GOP senators, one of whom subsequently switched parties. So is the President finally conceding that the 2009 stimulus was ineffective and unjust from the start?
The Democrat partisans are attempting to co-opt the terminology: somehow "shared sacrifice" doesn't actually mean everybody paying a little more. The Democrats pretend that the lower/middle-class have already paid their "fair share". When half of workers don't pay a dime towards government overhead, in what sense is that "shared sacrifice"? Why is it that government goods and services are less worthy than say money spent on rent, food, whatever?
The President needs to stop being a hypocrite and move for the elimination of all subsidies, not just those he identifies with GOP interests. He's got to stop issuing Chicken Little warnings: if there was a real question here, where are the serious proposals? If it is as bad as they suggest, why aren't they pushing for Dems to compromise meaningfully?
Political Humor
Regnery Publishing Submission
My caption entry:
And then the President says, 'The solution to balancing the budget is...', and his teleprompter went out...
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Electric Light Orchestra, "Do Ya". My favorite ELO tune, on my personal all-time top 10 list; one of the greatest rock songs ever. Jeff Lynne's earlier version with the Move is also amazing.
